May 11
Twice in the last few days, I’ve seen offers for free “e-books”. Actually, I see offers like that all the time, but this time, the books interested me, so I clicked download. In both instances, the “e-books” turned out to be PDFs. This annoys me. PDF – portable document format – was designed as a …
Jan 02
Imagine a new magazine. What does it take to hold your interest? For a while now, I’ve been playing with the idea of a new magazine covering Irish current affairs. One decent investigative piece every issue, half a dozen or so strong analysis pieces, perhaps an extended interview, and a few other pieces to lighten …
Jul 05
In the past few days, I’ve seen some great journalism. Deadbeatdolehead has documented an “error” by House of Ireland, who advertised for a Jobbridge intern. As DBDH points out, the job description differed when the same position was listed on a jobs website. As people protested to House of Ireland about what they had done, …
Jun 27
“Reporting in the regions is reverting to remote-control journalism with the proverbial email giving a convenient but one sided account of public meetings with no journalists present. Important markings such as Circuit Courts and Inquests, once the bread and butter of the local paper are going uncovered, unreported and unrecorded as regional newsrooms either don’t …
May 29
A copyright licensing agency has told a domestic violence charity that it requires a paid licence to link to newspaper articles from its website. In an email sent to Women’s Aid, Newspaper Licensing Ireland said that “a licence is required to link directly to an online article even without uploading any of the content directly …
Mar 04
Last night, I asked a politician a question. And because I was on twitter, as was the politician, I asked it on twitter. The politician answered me, but was also annoyed that I’d jumped to conclusions by posting to twitter. I argued I was just asking a question, not making a statement, but 24 hours …
Mar 02
I was asked to speak last night at “Crisis in Journalism”, an NUJ event for students. My brief was to give a perspective on life as a freelance journalist. RTÉ’s Colm O’Mongain spoke about broadcasting, Noirin Hegarty spoke about print and online, and Barry McCall gave an overview of the industry in Ireland. Usually I’m …
Feb 20
I want facts. And that means that often, some of my most productive reading is on blogs. Bloggers (unpaid, writing in their spare time, dismissed as hobbyists by “proper” journalists) produce the goods often enough to keep me coming back. Whether its Tony Humphreys‘ views on autism, a questionable advertising claim, or alleged social welfare …
Feb 04
For a while, I’ve been toying with an column idea. Call it The Raised Eyebrow. Part Flat Earth News, part questioning conventional wisdom. Last week, an editor agreed to a column. Depending on how it worked out, more might follow. One idea came from a throwaway Prime Time line. “Sean Sherlock’s website was hacked”, apparently …
Jan 29
I’m an occasional contributor to Scibernia, the Science podcast also broadcast on Near fm. Too occasional, unfortunately. While I’ve done a few reports for the project, scheduling problems mean I rarely get a chance to sit in on the studio recordings. I do however manage the occasional piece, such as when I travelled to the …
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